


Before the World Begins

by rilla



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Loss of Virginity, M/M, Pre-Canon, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:28:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26411917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilla/pseuds/rilla
Summary: "There was something to be said for youthful rebellion, although sometimes Lewis felt that he’d taken it a step too far."Lewis and Dick meet in New York City in 1938.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Comments: 21
Kudos: 87





	Before the World Begins

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in this fandom and I am super excited to post it! I have definitely fudged the timelines a little, and of course this is based firmly on the TV show and not the real people. Title taken from the Lesleá Newman poem Possibly.

_1938  
New York City_

There was something to be said for youthful rebellion, although sometimes Lewis felt that he’d taken it a step too far. 

He’d received another letter from his mother that morning that he’d skim-read before throwing it away – it said he could come home any time he wanted, his room would always be there, Blanche missed him, the dog did too. Of course it was the damn dog that lingered in his mind, old Freddie’s wet nose snuffling hopefully in Lewis’s hand for treats, the thought of how confused he must have been when Lewis had stormed out of the house one day and not come home again. How did you explain shit like that to a dog? You couldn’t. Maybe he just thought that Lewis was on a particularly long term away at boarding school. He’d graduated the summer before last, but Freddie didn’t know that. Then again, if Yale had happened the way it was supposed to – that was another point in his mother’s letter, his place at college was there any time he wanted – then Freddie would have been equally confused, so on the whole Lewis supposed it didn’t matter all that much.

Maybe he could get a dog of his own. Or a cat – he was out a lot, and Manhattan wasn’t the sort of place you could let a dog roam when you took it for walks without it getting itself killed. He thought of coming home to a cat, arching its back and mewing when he let himself in, padding around, curling up on the end of his bed at night. But a cat would be another mouth to feed and sometimes he had problems getting enough dinner for himself. Whisky wasn’t an issue – whisky had never been an issue, except for when it was – because it was easy to get fellows to buy you drinks here and there. It was a whole lot harder to get taken to a restaurant and to get someone else to cough up for a three-course meal if you were keeping the Nixon name close to your chest.

He sighed. It was getting late, and he could see that nothing was going to come from tonight. The bar was half-empty, and he wasn’t the kind of guy who cruised the streets or parks. Better to stay where it was relatively safe. He came to this bar a lot and slipped a cut to the bartender so he turned a blind eye, because although every fellow who came to this place was queer, not everyone expected a tip for a night of fun. This bar wasn’t strictly a pick-up joint for that kind of thing, so it was best to grease the wheels to keep them rolling so he in turn could keep going. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but it was something he knew his father would hate, and most days those things seemed to even out.

Lewis lit another cigarette – he had only two left, and nothing in his cupboards except the scrapings of a jar of mustard and a heel of bread, because the rent for his tiny, shitty place was sky high and he’d found out that budgeting wasn’t his strong point. Before he’d cut himself off from his family, he’d had no idea how many things there were to pay for in this life. Laundry, for example: scraping nickels out of his pockets to pay for someone to wash his clothes so he didn’t have to rinse out his shirts in his bathtub. Who’d ever heard of paying for your laundry to be done? All the things that had appeared in his parents’ house that seemed essential for everyday life: salt, socks, matches, toilet paper, butter, soap, all those things, he was discovering, had to be paid for, and jobs that he could bear to do were few and far between. The molar he’d had pulled instead of filled, the shoes that had been resoled. He wasn’t poor, he could go home any time he liked so long as he was willing to grovel (which presently he was not), but he was doing a good impression of it these days.

“You headed out?” The bartender leaned over towards him.

“I don’t see much of a reason to stay,” Lewis pointed out. “Other than this.” He finished his drink, although it wasn’t as warming in the pit of his stomach as he wanted it to be. “And now that’s gone, so I’m on my way.”

The bartender nodded, and then tilted his head a little, widening his eyes. He was not exactly an image of subtlety, although Lewis thought he was a nice guy. Prettier than Lewis liked them, which was odd: he liked girls with soft curves and red-painted mouths and shining curls, and he liked guys who could, if they were inclined, crush him against a wall. It was probably something with which his mother’s analyst would have a field day. Lewis followed his gaze and saw a guy standing close to the door, shifting from foot to foot in an agony of discomfort. He was tall, a couple inches taller than Lewis, probably – and a redhead, his hair glowing copper under the low lights. His mouth was drawn and he was looking about the place like he was about to turn tail and scarper right back out again.

To be fair to him, it wasn’t the most salubrious joint in which Lewis had spent time – it was dark-lit, the air a smoky bluish haze, men tucked away into the corners. Still, he felt more at home there than he did in any fancy restaurant his folks had dragged him to. It appealed to the darkest side of himself that had always turned restlessly inside his head, but that wasn’t going to be true of everyone. Sometimes the grime was the price you paid for what you found there. It only seemed fair, then, that he repaid this redhead’s nerves by making sure he had a hell of a night. 

“Hey!” Lewis nodded at him from across the room and smiled, slow and meaningful, when their eyes met. “Yeah, you. Red. Over here.”

The redhead approached, looking both relieved and apprehensive. “We don’t know each other?” he said, like he was checking, just in case.

“I think I’d remember you.” There were plenty of things that Lewis had forgotten after long nights, but he was pretty sure this guy wouldn’t have been one of them. He was broad-shouldered and long-legged, and his clothes were so neat and so plain that it looked as though his mother had chosen them. Who knew, maybe she had. “Drink?”

“Uh, yeah.” The redhead cleared his throat and looked at the bartender. “A Coca-Cola, please.”

“A Coca-Cola,” Lewis confirmed. “With what?”

“Oh. Nothing. Just the Coca-Cola.” He looked at Lewis’s glass. “And whatever you’re drinking.”

“Why, thank you.” There was a pause, awkward and still as music played low and sultry in the background, and then the drinks were placed in front of them. The redhead drank too much Coke in one mouthful and looked like he regretted it. Lewis hid a smile behind his own glass. “You’re not from New York City, are you?”

“It’s that obvious, huh?” The guy half-smiled. “No. Vacation. Spring break.”

“Oh.” Lewis looked speculatively over at the door. “I should tell you that if all your college buddies come racing in, they won’t be happily received.” Or maybe they would, depending on what they were looking for. 

“Yeah, I bet.” The redhead’s mouth tightened, whether in amusement or something else, Lewis couldn’t tell. “It’s okay. It was a solo trip. You ever find your own company more interesting than other people’s?”

“I can’t say that I have.” Lewis exhaled a laugh. He was unable to think of anything worse than spending time with his own thoughts. “So, what are you looking for tonight?” It was best to cut to the chase, he found, if you did it with enough of a smile and with enough arch humour that they didn’t feel like you were pushing them around or demanding anything. He was good at charming people, or mostly good, depending on how many drinks he’d had.

The redhead looked at him so thoughtfully that Lewis felt naked, like he’d got the measure of him entirely already. “I guess,” he said after a moment, “that I’m looking for something new.”

Lewis nodded, and glanced away from him for a moment. Behind the rows of liquor bottles behind the bar there was a mirror, old and smeared; their reflections were shadowed, but he liked them anyway, his dark hair next to this guy’s rich red. He could see the shadows under his own eyes even from here, which meant that he probably wasn’t much to look at close up today, but the guy didn’t seem to mind. Lewis was grateful for that. “You want to go somewhere quieter?”

A pause. The redhead’s Adam’s apple moved in his throat. He took another sip of his Coca-Cola, and then he said, “Why not?”

“I should warn you,” Lewis said, as they were standing up and he was shrugging his jacket on, “I ask for a gratuity at the end of the night.” He’d found that was a good way to state it, not coming on too hard, letting a guy who didn’t have much cash in his pocket or who didn’t want to pay for it duck out easily. 

“Yeah.” The guy was blushing, although he’d turned his head to hide it as he put money down on the bar for their drinks. “I thought, maybe. I brought cash.”

“How prepared of you. Were you a Boy Scout? You seem like you would have been a Boy Scout.” Lewis finished his drink.

“Funny.” The guy picked up his half-full Coca-Cola bottle, holding its neck loosely between two fingers. Good man: he wasn’t wasting it. “Where are we going?”

Lewis did not bring men back to his apartment. For one, it was tiny, for two it was draughty, and for three it was his own space and he didn’t want any creeps knowing where he lived or getting spunk on his sheets. He shrugged a shoulder and said, “Where are you staying, Boy Scout?”

Boy Scout rolled his eyes; Lewis was gratified that he didn’t complain at his new nickname. “The YMCA,” he said.

“I know it.” He’d been there before, in fact, more times than he expected Boy Scout wanted to hear about. “Here, we shouldn’t leave together. I’ll catch up.” The guy frowned minutely at him, like he was trying to size him up, and Lewis said, “It’s okay. It’s just easier.” The bar was safe, mostly – who knew he’d ever have to be grateful to the mob for something? – but he liked to take extra precautions when he left with a guy. You didn’t know who was watching or who was out on the streets, although Lewis had to admit that Boy Scout looked like he’d be able to kick any number of asses. 

Boy Scout put his hat on and left, and Lewis waited for a couple of heart-pounding moments. He always got nervous now, which was dumb: he’d done this enough times to know that it was going to go just fine, and that if it didn’t he was slippery enough to make his way out of most situations. He looked at the mirror next to the door and inspected his face – he looked simultaneously pallid and jaundiced in this light, which was just great – before walking out into the night. The redhead was walking along ahead, looking like he didn’t have a single care in the world. Lewis put his hat on and followed, pacing himself so he could catch up. When his footsteps neared, Boy Scout turned to him. “Oh. Hi. This is a surprise,” he said, entirely deadpan.

“Hey, stranger. Going my way?” Lewis shot him a half-smile. 

The guy was fighting his own smile, Lewis could tell. “Oh, ‘stranger’ now. Red, then Boy Scout, then ‘stranger’. You need to make up your mind. Or you could just call me Dick.”

“That your real name?” Lewis asked, and sighed when, under a streetlamp, Dick’s face froze. Clearly giving out a false name had never occurred to him. “You’re lucky you ended up with me, my friend,” he said, feeling a strange surge of protectiveness.

“Maybe so,” Dick said, quieter. Lewis could feel his eyes on him, but kept his own gaze on the street ahead. A taxi went by, a couple held hands on the other side of the road. Lewis kept his hands firmly in his pockets. Above them the sky was dark and groggy; it felt like there was a lot of cloud and smoke in this city blocking the stars out almost every night, but he could see the moon, an arching sickle hanging above the apartment buildings. “It’s just ahead here,” Dick said, and Lewis said, “Oh,” even though he knew exactly how far it was because he had walked the streets of this neighbourhood for too long now, too long by far.

Before the YMCA there was a small hole-in-the-wall diner, all lit up neon. Dick’s footsteps slowed – Lewis wasn’t sure if he realised it or not – and he glanced sideways inside. “I’ve got time,” Lewis said. Time was all he had. “If you’re hungry.”

Dick’s mouth quirked thoughtfully to the side, still peering into the diner. “I could eat ice cream.” The tone he said it in made Lewis think that Dick was the sort of person who could always eat ice cream, which seemed incongruous when you took it alongside his serious eyes and the still certainty of the way he moved.

So Dick got some ice cream, a scoop of strawberry and a scoop of vanilla in a chipped glass dish. When he was finished ordering he said “You want anything?” and although Lewis almost reflexively refused – if it was a burger he’d say yes, if it was real food, he’d eat whenever he could – he found himself saying, “Sure. Hey, could I have a chocolate shake?”

They sat in a red leather booth, their knees almost touching under the table, and he drank his chocolate milkshake through a red-and-white striped straw. He’d topped it up with his flask when the server, whose face did not reflect the fact that her nametag said ‘Welcome!’, wasn’t watching. Dick ate his ice cream like he was rationing it, tiny bites on the tip of his spoon. His half-empty Coca-Cola bottle was sitting neatly next to his elbow on the table. “How are you finding the city?” Lewis asked him after a moment, as though Dick was a friend from school and not a guy he’d met in a bar who was about to pay him for sex.

“I don’t know,” Dick said, focusing on a lump of frozen strawberry with a frown before looking back up at Lewis again. “It’s interesting, and beautiful in parts. I know there’s enough to do, but I seem to find myself wanting to just keep walking. Did you grow up here?”

“Here and there,” Lewis said. Something shuttered on Dick’s face, and Lewis felt obligated to explain – no, that wasn’t right. He didn’t feel obligated, it was more that he wanted to, in order to make those shutters rise again. “I went to school in California, lived there, lived here. My family always travelled a lot,” he told him, “so I guess I lived in plenty of places. What about you?”

“Pennsylvania. Lancaster County. You know it?” Lewis shook his head, and Dick shrugged it off. “I didn’t think so.” He scooped a tiny amount of strawberry and then a tiny amount of vanilla onto his spoon. Lewis was already three-quarters done with his milkshake but he took another slurp. “Dutch country,” Dick explained. 

Lewis eyed his half-empty Coca-Cola bottle, with its conspicuous lack of alcohol. “You’re not—”

“Amish?” Dick shook his head hard at the thought of it. 

Lewis let out an exaggerated breath. “Here I thought I was going to hell.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You still might. We’ll see.” Dick was flushing again. He was pale, so it showed up easily on his skin, starting on his neck and moving to his ears and finally into his cheeks. Lewis wondered if he was that pale all over; his face was freckled, and so were the backs of his hands. What about his shoulders? It sounded like he came from farming country, which meant taking your shirt off in the sun, right? Doing things like heaving hay bales around and telling cows where to go. So his shoulders, his chest, his forearms – what were they like? Impressive, probably, threaded with easy muscle, taut and beautiful.

He was distracted, and mustered up a smile. “It’s okay. I doubt today’s going to be the tipping point.” If hell existed, he was pretty sure he’d signed up a long time ago, but lucky for him he didn’t believe in anything past the moment you shut your eyes on the very last day of your life. He found the idea of ceasing to exist strangely restful, but he knew himself: he was a greedy person and there were a lot of things he wanted to experience in this world before that day came. “How’d you hear about Kerry’s?”

“Huh?”

“The bar.”

“Oh.” His brow furrowed slowly and then he caught Lewis’s eye, more intense now. “Do you ever feel like you have another sense? For—”

Guys like them. Lewis nodded quickly, waving a hand like it could flick the words right off Dick’s tongue and throw them away. Yeah, sure he felt that, which scared the shit out of him because it meant that they could sense him right back. “Yeah, yeah.” He drank some more milkshake, enough so the dregs rattled in the bottom of the glass.

“Well, I asked a guy where was good to go around here.” Dick shrugged, remarkably unselfconscious. “And he told me.” He eyed Lewis’s empty glass. “You want another?”

Yes, he did want another. And then he wanted a banana split right after, and then he wanted to go to sleep for twelve hours in a bed that didn’t smell like his own unwashed body. “No. Thank you.” In the neon lighting of the diner he could see more details of Dick’s face, the delicately hazy lilac shadows under his eyes, his eyelashes, pale but long, the lines on either side of his mouth that made Lewis think that even if he didn’t smile that often, when he did, it was good. His hair still blazed, bronze and gold mixing with that shade of copper, and his fingers were long and beautifully shaped and his knuckles grazed but half-healed. “So what do you do in Lancaster County?”

“I go to school. I bag groceries.” Dick sounded almost self-deprecating, like he was aware it didn’t sound like much of a life. It didn’t sound so bad to Lewis, if you were that kind of person, which he was not. “What about you?”

“Uh, well, I do—” Lewis was stumped, which didn’t happen often. “I do this, I guess.”

“You drink milkshakes?” 

Lewis pulled his straw out of his glass and used it to gouge some of Dick’s strawberry ice cream away for himself, leaving a streak of chocolate milkshake marring the pale pink. “And I steal ice cream.”

“Evidently.” Dick’s eyes were on his mouth when he sucked the straw clean. “How’d you end up here?”

It didn’t seem feasible to go into the whole story, so Lewis threw his most crooked and disarming smile at Dick. “I wanted an adventure.”

“And you got it.” Dick sounded almost sympathetic, which was unbearable. 

Under the table, Lewis reached out to run his hand over Dick’s thigh. It felt taut and muscular; he tried to put that out of his head, tried to stop himself being distracted by any sincere attraction, as he let his smile turn wolfish. “I sure did.”

Dick’s breath caught in his throat and Lewis felt an odd wash of triumph as he watched him duck his head to eat another spoonful of ice cream. He retrieved his hand and knotted his fingers together so they didn’t do anything too dramatic to Dick in public. He talked to a lot of guys these days, but not many of them were like Dick. A lot of them were more drunk, for starters, and less pleasant and polite. The safety net of Lewis’s family meant that he never did anything that he truly did not want to, and that he could afford to be somewhat selective. He’d never had sex with a guy who he wasn’t attracted to in some way; he told himself that what he was doing, he’d do it for free anyway so why not ask for a little cash on the side? But that didn’t mean that he thought they were decent men. Admittedly he didn’t have much experience with them – he was not, himself, a decent man – but as far as he could gather, this redhead sitting across the table was decent, very much so. He thought about that room at the YMCA and wondered if he’d have time to ask some questions in private that he didn’t dare to ask in public before they got down to the reason they were spending a night together. What brought a nice boy from Lancaster County to New York, and from his hotel room at night to the sort of place where Lewis spent his evenings?

“So what do you study?” he asked, and eyed Dick’s shoulders. “And what sports do you play?”

“Economics. And I wrestled some,” Dick said, offhand.

Lewis blinked at him through a sudden and intense vision of being wrestled by him, of losing, of being pressed into a bed, Dick’s solid weight on top of him. He managed: “Oh.”

Dick laughed; he could tell what Lewis was thinking, damn him, but instead of pointing that out he said kindly, “What about you?”

“Sports aren’t for me.” Lewis shook his head, but added, “Although I liked skiing.” It felt like a thousand years ago, the crisp white snow and the bite of cold in his nose, Blanche careering past him screeching before falling headfirst into a snowdrift. He remembered looking sideways at his mother and the two of them laughing together in a moment of harmony that had briefly made him feel for once as though his family wasn’t faking it.

“Skiing, huh.” Dick was frowning again, pushing his empty ice cream bowl away. “I’ve never been.”

“Oh, you should,” Lewis said. “The Alps are beautiful.” He smiled at Dick slowly, letting himself be drawn into his steady gaze and his blue eyes. “I’ll take you there.”

“Yeah?” Dick was smiling back at him. It was a small smile, but he didn’t seem like a showy kind of person so Lewis didn’t mind. “Where else are you going to take me?”

There was a dirty meaning behind those words but Dick seemed to be oblivious to it, so Lewis decided he would be too. Instead he said, “London. Paris. We’ll do the European tour.”

“What if I don’t speak French?” 

“I’ll teach you,” Lewis said. “Or I could just order for you. A croque monsieur for my redhead friend, please!” He extended an arm and the old broad behind the counter looked at him askance. He grinned at her and she rolled her eyes, a smile tugging at her mouth, before wiping up the countertop.

“A croque monsieur?” Dick looked unsure.

“Grilled cheese with ham.”

“Oh, yeah. I could go for one of those. You can order me as many croque monsieurs as you like.” Dick’s eyes had narrowed slightly as he surveyed Lewis, questioning and thoughtful. It was that look that made him feel naked again, like Dick had pulled out a filing cabinet full of Lewis’s thoughts and started looking neatly through it. “So, French. School in California. Skiing. The Alps. And…”

“Here?” Lewis let out what was almost a laugh, and bit out, “Yeah. It doesn’t go together well, huh?”

“Not really.” Dick left a gap there, clearly so that Lewis could explain if he wanted to. He didn’t want to, but at the same time he thought that maybe he needed to. And what was the harm, anyway? It had been a long time since he spoke to anyone with any real honesty. Sure, he knew people living nearby, he saw the same people around in the bars he went to, he got along with most of them, but they didn’t know shit about him and he liked to keep it that way. In any case, nobody was more aware than him that every single problem he had was insignificant and that there were people in the world who had it a lot worse so he needed to shut up and get on with things. That didn’t make him feel any better, though. Sometimes he felt as though there was a gaping hole somewhere inside his gut. That hole could be filled when he drank or when there was a warm body pressed against his, but it was always only temporary. He looked at people walking down the street with smiles on their faces and thought, _How did you get to be so happy? Aren’t we all supposed to be sad? How come you get to be happy and I never learned how?_ He was sad all the time, and he always had been, and he didn’t know how to quit it. Sometimes he saw in Blanche’s eyes that she felt the same way, which was unfair – she was just a kid, but maybe being unhappy was just the Nixon way. Running away from his life hadn’t helped: it had just replaced old problems, like his father being an asshole, with new problems like not being able to afford a new toothbrush when the bristles on his got frayed and worn out. In any case, his father hadn’t stopped being an asshole just because Lewis hadn’t seen him in a while. 

He looked at Dick and shrugged a shoulder, jamming his straw into the bottom of his milkshake glass until it was ragged. “Do you get along with your family?”

“Sure I do,” Dick said. How did he switch so fast from that penetrative gaze to this guilelessness? “But you don’t?”

“Not so much, I’m afraid,” Lewis said with a grin, keeping it light. It was important to keep it light, he knew that, although it felt harder than usual under the heavy, thoughtful gaze across the table from him. “It’s a classic case of my being a poor little rich kid – my old man screws around, my mother – well, I don’t know, I don’t know my mother that well. My little sister, though – my little sister’s okay.”

“I have a sister,” Dick said. His face had brightened and relaxed at the mention of Blanche, and then tightened again when he considered the idea of Lewis’s family. “A little one too. She’s six. I’m sorry about your parents.”

“It’s okay.” Lewis shrugged it off, seized on a more pleasant conversation. “Six, huh? Mine’s thirteen. Just you wait.” Or was she fourteen? It felt like the sort of thing he should know, but it had been more than a year since the last time he’d seen her. Even still, before he’d left she’d started to turn from a little girl who talked about nothing but horses to a young lady who knew how to curl her hair and who shrieked at him whenever he brought a friend around without telling her first. 

“Well, I’m hoping to be out of there by then. Getting through her teenage years from a safe distance.” Dick made a face that was so exactly the sort of face that someone like him would wear when getting yelled at by a younger teenage sibling that Lewis had to laugh, loud and sincere; and as it rang out across the room he found that Dick’s expression had dropped and he was looking at Lewis warmly instead, in a way that could only be described as charmed.

Lewis felt too hot and then too sad, a combination he was not unfamiliar with. _Oh, I’m a loser_ , he wanted to say, _don’t look at me like that, I don’t deserve it. Don’t start to think I’m wonderful just because I have a little sister who I love and because I’m willing to go back to your hotel with you. Don’t think I’m somebody who can accept anything like that, because I’m incapable of it, and in fact of most other normal things as well._

He said nothing. Instead he looked at the table, and started to shred his paper napkin, and across from him he heard Dick asking for the check. “I’ll get this,” Dick said, which was lucky because Lew had approximately fifteen cents in his pocket. When the check arrived Dick laid down his money almost self-consciously, like he wasn’t used to restaurants, even diners as shitty as the one they were in. 

“Thanks,” Lewis said, and held the door open for Dick on the way out. From behind he saw Dick’s neck flush in the low light from the diner window, but when he looked at his face in the dark he couldn’t tell whether he was blushing or not. 

They walked side by side towards Dick’s hotel, closer than they’d walked before. After a moment Dick nudged Lewis gently with his shoulder and said, “You didn’t give me a straight answer before. What are you doing here?”

Lewis screwed up his eyes at the streetlamp they were approaching and said, “Things came to a head. I had a fight with my dad. I was supposed to be going to Yale— yeah. I know.” Dick had whistled, low and impressed, under his breath. “Believe me, through no skill of my own – my family are great fans of nepotism. I had a friend over, I was talking to him about how I was going to major in history, my dad overheard – he wants me to be a businessman like him, he thought history was a waste of time.” Lewis hoped that his eyeroll was audible. He wasn’t even particularly interested in history, but he wasn’t interested in anything else either and it had seemed like the best of a bad bunch. “Anyway, later that night, we had it out, and it turned into having a whole lot more out than that, and I left the next morning. I guess it’s a little ironic, how it’s all ending up – he told me I’d never do an honest day’s work in my life, and here I am, proving him right.”

Dick was silent for a moment as they walked and then he said, “How many days of honest work do you think your dad’s done?”

That was a point, and oddly reassuring. Lewis turned to smile at him through the dark and said, “Not all that many.”

“Well then.” Dick blew out his breath as they approached the hotel. “And how do you feel doing this?” he said, turning to Lewis. There were more questions on his face now, even though it was evident that he was the sort of person to try not to let them show.

Lewis tried to answer them all as simply as possible: “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“Yeah?” Dick’s eyes were trained on him like he was trying to work out even more of what was going on inside Lewis’s head. “What about that?” His gaze flickered down to the flask Lewis had shoved in his pocket.

“My apartment’s cold,” Lewis said. “Keeps me warm.” It was true, but there was a bigger answer that had started to frighten him when he thought about it in too much detail, so as a rule he did not. 

Dick said, “Okay,” and clearly didn’t believe him, which was annoying but also smart of him. Then he looked at the hotel. “Do you still—”

“Oh, yeah,” Lewis said, and the corner of Dick’s mouth twitched upwards.

His room was small and scrupulously tidy. He’d splashed out on his own bathroom, Lewis guessed because he’d half-planned on a night like this one. Dick took off his shoes right away and put them neatly next to the door, so Lewis did the same. He felt as though things had kicked up a notch very suddenly, and that the balance between them had shifted now that he was in Dick’s room to do what Dick wanted him to do. So the shoes came off, and the hat too, and his jacket, and he stood in his shirtsleeves. He put his flask onto the desk, next to where Dick had carefully stood that half-bottle of Coca-Cola that he’d hung onto. 

The light over the bed was too bright, so Lew flipped on the bedside lamp instead and turned off the overhead one. The light was softer and more golden then, and infinitely more inviting. The window had been left open a crack and he went over to close it, noting with a pleasant surprise that there was a window box full of deep red flowers, geraniums maybe, although flowers weren’t something he knew much about.

Once the noise of the cars outside had been mostly shut out, the quiet was deafening. Dick stood on the other side of the bed, his hand tightening and loosening reflexively on the loose end of his tie, which he had unknotted but kept on. He let out a breath that Lewis heard was shaky, and the balance tipped back so that they were more equal again. “Hey,” Lewis said, “You know it’s all right, don’t you?”

Dick nodded, but didn’t seem able to say much more than that.

Lewis edged around the bed to move closer to him, laying a hand on his arm, which felt solid even under his jacket. _Wrestling_ , Lewis thought, with a satisfying jolt. “It really is all right,” he said. “There are a million things you can hate yourself for. This isn’t one of ’em.” He let go of Dick’s arm and curved his hand around the back of Dick’s head instead, hoping that the extra contact might get him to melt a little and to stop worrying. His hair felt less sticky with product than some men’s did; Dick seemed like the sort of person to get it to stay in place through sheer force of will.

A moment of stillness, and then Dick seemed to force himself to relax, his shoulders dropping. Lewis moved his hand from the back of his head to the side of his face instead, fingers stroking over the hard line of his jaw. He touched Dick’s mouth with his thumb and said, “Can I kiss you?”

“Yeah,” Dick said in almost a rasp, and Lewis leaned in. He wasn’t expecting fireworks and initially there weren’t any: Dick barely kissed him back, it was just Lewis’s dry mouth moving over Dick’s lips, kissing the corner of them, taking his bottom lip between his own. Suddenly he was unsure whether Dick had kissed anyone before or if he was just a little frozen; but then there was a hitch in Dick’s breathing and his lips opened, just a fraction at first, and then they were moving together, hot breath and the audible slick of spit. He felt the weight of Dick’s hands on his waist, running up his sides and down again, and touched the flat plane of Dick’s stomach and chest.

All of a sudden he couldn’t get enough of him. He tugged Dick’s shirt out of his pants so he could run his hands up the smooth skin of his back, and then down again to grip his ass, to pull their hips together. Dick said, “Oh,” as his breath caught in his throat, and turned his head to bury his face in the side of Lewis’s neck. Lewis felt the scratch of teeth like little explosions running over his skin and buried his fingers tight in Dick’s hair, holding him there as he pressed kisses to the hollow of Lewis’s throat. 

He wanted Dick’s mouth on his again. He dipped his head to catch him in a kiss and Dick reciprocated hard, the two of them suddenly shaky together and frantic; Lewis fumbled with Dick’s belt, Dick accidentally pulled a button off Lewis’s shirt, and Lewis cursed as he tried to undo it himself before giving up and dragging it over his head instead. Dick looked at him then for a second and said, “Your hair,” and Lewis felt he should feel self-conscious as Dick combed fingers through it and flattened it down for him with a small smile that was even more intimate than their kisses, but he found that he didn’t feel any way at all except good.

The bed then, jerky with desperation. Lewis hauled Dick over there, sticking a hand in the waistband of his pants and tugging him, sat down on the edge and dragged Dick down on top of him. Sometimes he felt suffocated at this moment, sometimes he found himself looking desperately at the ceiling over a man’s shoulder and thinking, _If I wanted to leave, maybe I couldn’t_ , but right now he just loved the solidity of Dick on top of him, running his fingertips over the muscles of his back, the piano keys of his ribs, hooking a knee over his hip to drag him in tight. He was hard, they were both hard, they were pressing together like two teenagers rutting in the back of a car. He reached down to touch the length of Dick’s cock through his pants and Dick gasped against his mouth. There was something beautiful about the way he smelled, something clean; not soap exactly, he smelled like fresh air and cool cotton despite the heat of his skin. 

He managed to get Dick’s pants open finally and touched him, wrapped his hand around the hard, silky length of him. From the way Dick’s eyelashes fluttered, from the way he was panting a little already, Lewis felt like maybe he hadn’t done this before. That made sense. He seemed like the sort of person who might have waited for love.

“I want—” Dick said, and kissed Lewis again, harder now, teeth almost clashing, “I want you—”

“Use your words,” Lewis said, and Dick glared and smiled at him at the same time, their faces so close together that Lewis had to sense it more than see it. 

“Get these off,” Dick managed to say after a moment, pulling at Lewis’s pants, and so he did; they were already undone so he wriggled out of them and pulled Dick’s down lower too so he could kick them off, and their underwear too; and their bare skin together was delicious, the warmth of it running right through him like whisky, their mouths together sloppy and desperate. “Can I,” Dick said, and Lewis wanted to say, _You can do whatever you want to me, that’s what I’m here for,_ but it didn’t feel so much that way any more so he just said, “Please,” and Dick smiled to himself, almost secretive, as he wrapped his hand around Lewis’s cock. 

He was gentle at first, gentler than Lewis would have predicted, too gentle and too careful like he was afraid to hurt him. “It’s okay, just do it like you do it to yourself,” Lewis said, and then thought, _Dutch country_ , and said with a little alarm, “You _do_ do it to yourself, right?”

Dick gave him a look that meant _I’m not going to dignify that with a response_ and also _Yes_ , and tightened his grip a little. 

“Give me your hand,” Lewis said, and Dick did without question; Lewis licked his palm, tasted salt and sugar, and said, “That helps. A little lubrication, you know.” He had Vaseline in his jacket pocket, but that was on the other side of the room and there was no way he was leaving this bed right now. Dick had watched Lewis’s mouth with something like fascination and let out a breath that was almost a moan; and then he touched him again, more confident now, and Lewis said, “Jesus. Yeah. Like that. Like that,” and gripped onto the back of Dick’s neck and drew him down to kiss him again.

Their tongues together, their hips sliding against each other’s; Dick’s hand shifted and then he was getting them off together, so much delicious friction that Lewis couldn’t help but swear and press his hips upward. “Shh, shh,” Dick said against his mouth, sounding like he was almost laughing from the joy of it, and so they swallowed their words into kisses instead. Lewis wrapped his hand around Dick’s as they moved together and rubbed his thumb over the head of Dick’s cock. Dick said “Oh,” sounding lost, and Lewis did it again and then Dick was coming against Lewis’s stomach and over his hand, hot and hard as he gasped against the side of Lewis’s face, so close that his eyelashes were prickling against Lewis’s temple. Lewis held him there because he felt that was what he needed, and then he kissed him again as he came down from it. When their faces broke apart there was a dazzling smile on Dick’s face, his chest heaving. “God,” he said, and buried his face against Lewis’s neck to kiss his skin and breathe heavily against him; Lewis stroked the back of his neck, the short hairs there, and turned his face to kiss the side of his forehead. 

Then Dick came back to himself and said, “Let me—” and gestured a little wildly in the region of Lewis’s crotch. 

“Steady there, boy scout,” Lewis said, and Dick rolled his eyes. When he sat up Lewis could see that he was gleaming with sweat; his pale skin would have made him look like a carved marble statue if he hadn’t also been a little red and blotchy. He liked that even more.

Dick had an intrepid look in his eyes. “I want to try something,” he said, and Lewis could tell exactly what he meant from the way that he felt Dick’s lips on his collarbone and down his chest. He stretched luxuriantly, dug his toes into the sheets as Dick settled between his legs. “Listen, you gotta tell me,” Dick said, meaning _Help me, tell me what to do,_ and Lewis said, “First off, after that I’m not going to last long,” and Dick smiled to himself, looking pleased.

“You can do what you want,” Lewis said, “aside from, you know, try to wear it as a party hat, or put it in a hot dog bun,” and Dick laughed, resting his cheek against Lewis’s thigh. “I mean…” What he did was usually instinctive, but Dick seemed like the sort of person who liked to take a task to pieces and fully understand it so that he could be excellent every time. Lewis closed his eyes and settled back, visualising it, and murmured, “It doesn’t always have to be just your mouth. You can use your hand too,” and felt Dick wrap his palm around his length. “You gotta cover your teeth with your lips,” he said. “I mean, some guys like some teeth but not everyone does.”

“Do you?”

Lewis opened an eye. Dick was staring at him, more flushed than Lewis had seen him before. “I like a little,” he said. “Not too much. Maybe not on the first try. Just do what you want to do. Believe me, if it isn’t working for me I’ll let you know.”

Dick seemed pleased to hear that, which was a surprise because Lewis didn’t know many guys who’d be happy to have their sucking-off technique critiqued. He dipped his head down and took the head of Lewis’s cock into his mouth, sucking wet and slow, and Lewis felt himself relax, feeling like his whole body was made of honey, and said, “I think you might just be a natural.” Dick hummed a happy noise around him and the vibration dragged a gasp out of Lewis’s throat. He touched Dick’s hair, trying to be gentle, and Dick moaned another approving noise which made Lewis think maybe he’d liked that and wanted more, so he tugged his fingers harder over Dick’s head, over the delicate contours of his skull, yanked his hair just a little and felt the sweet wet pressure around him increase. 

He’d been right; he wasn’t going to last long, especially not with Dick moving his hand like that, shifting his tongue experimentally; Lewis dug his toes into the bed and Dick sucked harder and Lewis said, out of breath, “Hey, be careful, I’m close.” Dick looked up at him and there was something so obscene and beautiful about that that Lewis said, “Shit, seriously!” But Dick didn’t move, went deeper, and Lewis swore and came in his mouth, pressing his fist against his own lips to shut himself up.

Dick swallowed and coughed a little and came up looking triumphant and a little teary-eyed. “You taste good,” he said, sounding hoarse, and Lewis licked the side of his own hand where Dick had come over him a few minutes before and said, “So do you.” His other hand was still in Dick’s hair and he tugged it affectionately, feeling like his head was spinning, and said, “That was extremely good.” He tried to sound a little arch, but it didn’t work, his words were garbled together and he felt like his whole body was shaking.

“Yeah?” Dick moved back up the bed and flopped down beside him. 

“Yeah. It’s a shame you’re only here on vacation.” Lewis snuck a glance sideways at him. “I’d be happy to show you a whole lot more.”

“That reminds me.” Something snapped between them, and Dick sat up before shifting off the bed, finding his jacket and fumbling in it for his wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

“You don’t have to do this right now,” Lewis said. Everything seemed darker all of a sudden. Dick threw him a penetrating gaze and so Lewis sighed and told him how much; he seemed to think it was a perfectly fair amount, which it was, and Lewis watched him count out notes from his wallet. It didn’t look like the sort of wallet that had held all that much money in its lifetime, which made him feel guilty, but not guilty enough to ask him to stop. 

“I’ll put it here,” Dick said, and slid it under Lewis’s flask. Then, after a moment, he said, “Do you have to leave right now?”

“No,” Lewis said, and held up an arm so that Dick could come back to bed and crawl beneath it. “Get over here.”

Dick smiled at him, held up a finger, and turned to drain the rest of his Coca-Cola. He made a face before sliding back on top of the bed. “Warm and flat.”

“Sounds like two perfect adjectives to describe two gentlemen minutes after going to bed together,” Lewis said, and Dick laughed before turning his face against Lewis’s neck. They lay there for a moment in easy, companionable silence, and then Lewis said, “Was that the first time you’ve done it?”

“I mean, that wasn’t _it_ ,” Dick said, which wasn’t the point and they both knew it. Then he said, “You mean with a man?”

“Sure. Or with anyone.” Lewis ran his fingers absently up and down the line of Dick’s spine.

He felt Dick wince. “Did it really seem that bad?”

“It wasn’t bad at all.” He gripped onto the taut curve of Dick’s hip to let him know he meant it. “I was just curious. A nice boy like you comes to New York City to meet a guy like me…”

There was another moment of quiet, this time less comfortable. Dick wriggled away and frowned at the ceiling, one hand behind his head. His underarm hair wasn’t as red as the hair on his head, which was probably a good thing. Finally he said: “I wanted to see if it was something I’d be able to live without.”

Lewis turned onto his side to look at Dick’s profile, the straight line of his nose, his pale lashes, the surprising softness of his mouth. “What conclusion did you come to?”

“Still thinking,” Dick said, although Lewis could tell from the tightness of the skin around his eyes that he already knew, and that it wasn’t necessarily going to be an easy thing to deal with. Lewis reached out to touch his stomach, the ridges of muscle there, to twist his fingertips gently in the hair on his chest. Dick shifted comfortably and said, eyes drifting shut, “That feels so good.”

“Yeah?” Lewis leaned over and pressed a couple of kisses to his collarbone and then to his mouth. They were slower now, and a little more measured, and then he flopped back down onto his pillow. He’d just about closed his eyes when Dick said, “Yale, huh?”

Lewis breathed out a laugh. “Yeah, Yale.”

“You know, you could have a lot of opportunities if you went to Yale.”

Lewis opened his eyes again. Dick had turned onto his side and was gazing earnestly at him. “This is what counts as pillow talk in Lancaster County?”

Dick smiled, but his eyes were still serious. “I mean it. You can’t stay here forever.”

“Why don’t you watch me,” Lewis said. If Dick didn’t think he was stubborn enough to spite everyone he’d ever known by destroying his own life, Dick was entirely wrong.

Dick poked him in the side. “You can’t,” he said, and then added, as though he was stating facts instead of making wild and insane assumptions, “First, you’re very smart. Second, you aren’t happy. Third, this isn’t safe—”

“And yet you’re here,” Lewis pointed out, with more darkness in his voice than he intended.

Dick let out a slow breath, rolled onto his back, and then admitted to the ceiling, “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Lewis threw out a hand sideways and touched Dick’s chest – not as an apology exactly, or a peace offering, nothing as deep as that, just so he’d know they were all right. “There are so many people out there who are much dumber than me and much more unhappy, doing much more unsafe shit. Being smart – and I don’t know if I even am especially smart, I’ve just had a good education—”

“And if I was in bed with one of them,” Dick said, politely steamrollering him, “I’d say, go home to your family, or learn a trade, or ask someone for help. To you, I’m saying: go to Yale. Sure, you hate your dad, so spite him by succeeding. You deserve a future, and you aren’t getting one this way.”

“The world’s falling apart,” Lewis said, although he felt his first flicker of hope for months. “Maybe none of us are going to have a future.”

“Maybe not,” Dick said implacably. “But it’s important to try.”

“I hate trying,” Lewis said, and rolled over on top of Dick and buried his face in his neck. “This sounds horrible. I hate doing things. Why can’t I just not do things?”

Dick was laughing and Lewis felt his arms go around him. He looked down into Dick’s blue eyes, which were keen and gentle at the same time, and wanted badly to kiss him again, and so he did.

*

He awoke later that night with Dick’s arm slung across his middle and the sheets pushed down to their waists. He took a moment to admire the muscles in Dick’s forearm before sliding out from beneath it and padding over to the bathroom to empty his bladder. He flushed without thinking about it and wondered if the loud, ancient plumbing had woken up the entire building.

It had woken up Dick, for sure, who was sitting up and stretching and looking bizarrely alert. “Sorry,” Lewis said, and Dick shrugged it off as he reached for his watch. “It’s only three-fifteen,” he reported as he set the watch back on his bedside table. “Come back to bed.”

It didn’t seem possible to refuse that, and so Lewis did not. As he walked past the desk he caught sight of his flask and wanted suddenly and desperately to take a drink from it. The fact that he didn’t, he thought, meant that everything was fine and dandy. He crawled back into bed beside Dick and pillowed his head on Dick’s shoulder, which was not as comfortable as it looked, so he shifted off and back onto an actual pillow. “What are you doing today?” he asked.

“Going back home,” Dick said. Lewis felt a knot of disappointment tie itself inside his stomach. “I need to write a paper.”

“During spring break?”

“Extra credit.” 

“Of course.” Lewis heaved a breath before making himself smile at Dick and spidering his fingertips across Dick’s chest. “Any wrestling meets any time soon?”

“No.” He could hear Dick’s returning smile in his voice. “Why, did you want to come and watch?”

“A bunch of sweaty guys on top of each other? Not my kind of thing.”

“That so?”

“Oh, yeah. Especially not you.”

“Perish the thought.” 

Lewis turned onto his side and Dick did too, so they were facing each other, legs tangled up, chests so close they were almost touching. He leaned in to kiss Dick first, but Dick’s response was enthusiastic right away, letting out a little breath that sounded almost like relief. He wished he could get as close to Dick as he possibly could and it felt as though Dick felt the same way because he looped his leg over Lewis’s thighs, already so much more confident than just a few hours before. 

Easily, Dick flipped him onto his back, resting on top of him, one knee either side of Lewis’s hips. The sight of him there, the flat pale planes of his stomach, his half-hard cock, the flex of his muscular thighs. “Jesus,” Lewis managed to say, and Dick smiled, as close to teasing as Lewis expected he’d ever get, held Lewis’s arms above his head against the headboard, and said: “Pinned you.”

“I give. Is that the right thing to say?” Lewis said, shifting underneath him, looking at his mouth, the new faint bruises on his neck. “I don’t know. You win.”

Dick grinned and released him, before sitting back and grinding down against him, almost experimentally, and all of a sudden Lewis recollected him saying earlier in the evening, after what they’d done for the first time, that it wasn’t _it_. Oh. Shit. Well, he wasn’t complaining. He reached up and wrapped a hand around the back of Dick’s neck, tugging him down to kiss him again before murmuring against his mouth, “How do you want me?”

Dick’s ears were red again, he could see that even in the darkness, as he shifted his hips on top of Lewis’s. His hands were resting lightly on Lewis’s chest and he was worrying his bottom lip between his teeth before he said, quieter now, “I thought that maybe you’d have me.”

The reality of it, the fact of it, felt a little as though Lewis had been punched between the eyeballs. Just the thought of it made him fully hard, which Dick had evidently realised, because he looked pleased with himself and ground down his hips a little more. “Shit,” Lewis said, and reached out to hold him still so he could attempt to get a coherent thought in his head. “Of course. Yeah. I’ll do anything you want.”

Dick paused for a moment, as though trying to find the right words, and then he said tightly: “I want you to have a good time too.”

“Oh, believe me,” Lewis said, with absolute honesty. “That won’t be a problem.”

Dick’s face relaxed again. Frankly, he said, “It’s another thing I haven’t done before, and I don’t know—”

“I got you.” Lewis’s hands were on Dick’s hips still, and he stroked the soft skin just above them with his thumbs in a way that he hoped was reassuring. He had never really had to reassure anyone before – not that he had to now, but he found himself wanting to. “Some guys, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but they wash before, I think it makes them feel less self-conscious—” 

He felt as though Dick was maybe that kind of person, and wasn’t as surprised as he might have assumed he’d be when Dick nodded and said, “Before I came out tonight I…” He shrugged a shoulder and Lewis was caught suddenly in imagining what that must have looked like, Dick with his thoughtful intent face thinking about what he was setting out to do that evening, in that bathroom just a few feet away.

“See?” Lewis smirked up at him. “Boy scout.”

Dick rolled his eyes and muttered, “Shut up.”

They kissed again, and Lewis let his fingers trail down Dick’s back to rest on the curve of his ass, gripping it and pulling him in tighter. Dick let out a sharp breath as Lewis touched him between his cheeks, gentle at first, finding that tight ring of muscle with the tip of his finger. He wondered how many times Dick had touched himself here experimentally; Lewis hadn’t realised how great it was until he’d been seventeen, eighteen or so, and discovered that little spot inside himself that made his vision white out. 

He pushed at Dick’s shoulders so he rolled onto his back, settling himself there with a quizzical expression. “Vaseline,” Lewis explained, and Dick nodded, shivering slightly as Lewis got himself up off the bed and across the room, fumbling through the pockets of his jacket to find it. There was something very undignified about standing on cold wood floors by yourself looking through your jacket with a hard-on, but he didn’t feel like Dick particularly cared. He was holding himself up on one elbow, eyes hooded and hazy as his gaze followed Lewis, and there was something beautiful about the sight of him, something almost classical about the long smooth lines of his limbs, the lean curves of his muscles, his cock hard against his belly. 

Lewis found it finally and dropped it beside them on the bed as he crawled back on top of Dick and kissed him again, touching his chest and his stomach and the hair on his thighs before wrapping his hand around his cock. Dick bit his bottom lip as they kissed, on purpose or by accident Lewis couldn’t tell, but it ignited that heat in his body even more. He moved his hand from the length of him to his balls and then between his legs, nudging with the back of his hand to encourage Dick to open them wider. He obliged, flinging an arm around Lewis’s neck at the same time to drag him down to kiss him harder like he was a lifebelt in a stormy sea, and Lewis touched his hole again, pressing his fingertip against him, and felt him fractionally relax. “Good,” Lewis murmured against his mouth, moving away for just a moment to find that Vaseline and to slick up his fingers. “You’re okay with me, you hear? You can trust me.”

“I know,” Dick said, turning his head and breathing in sharply as Lewis pressed a finger inside him. He could see tendons standing out in Dick’s neck and the flex of his biceps and murmured against his cheek, “Relax.”

“This is me relaxed,” Dick said. “I know that might be hard to believe.”

“You know, it really isn’t,” Lewis said, and that earned a laugh, a short uncomfortable one, and Lewis drew back and said, “Roll over. On your belly.” 

Dick did as he was told, no questions asked. His shoulder blades were dusted with freckles and the skin on his back was as smooth and pale as cream. Lewis ran a hand down the line of his spine, pressed his knuckles in to unknot his muscles, and Dick let out a sigh of pleasure. It was so good, this whole thing, getting to touch him, running his hands over the backs of his thighs and feeling the lines of his muscles, pressing kisses to the base of his spine. “You don’t have to,” Dick began in a choked out whisper, and Lewis said, “I know,” and did it anyway, because he wanted to, because he liked this, and because he knew that Dick would too.

He tasted fresh, like he’d washed carefully, soap and skin and clean sweat. Lewis pressed a kiss to his hole, messy and wet, and Dick made an agreeable noise and shuffled his legs wider apart. Lewis smiled against him and kissed again, pressing his tongue inside and feeling Dick shudder with want. This was doing the trick, he’d known it would; Dick was melting into the bed, he no longer felt as tense and nervous. Lewis kissed again and again, a hand sliding underneath Dick’s body to wrap around his length again and to stroke him; Dick pushed himself up and that was easier, made it easier to slick up his finger again and to gently push it inside him, slow, carefully, and Dick said, sounding faint, “Jesus Christ.”

It sounded like the words weren’t familiar on his lips. “You good?” Lewis asked. “Keep talking to me. Keep telling me.”

“So good.” Dick’s forearm was over his eyes, his face was flushed, and there was something magnificent about his vulnerability right now. Lewis crooked his finger and Dick jolted and cursed and then said, “Sorry,” and Lewis said, “I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“You should.” Dick’s voice was muffled, and he arched his back and hissed out a breath as Lewis slowly pressed a second finger into him. He was trying hard not to think about how tight he felt, how warm, how good he looked; this wasn’t about him, it was about Dick – but maybe it was about both of them, about them together, about the way he could make Dick feel. He moved his fingers and Dick let out a shaky sigh.

It didn’t take long; he got the feeling that Dick had a good amount of control over his body, that it would do what he wanted it to – which was the absolute opposite to Lewis, who occasionally felt as though he was walking around in someone else’s skin, but that wasn’t the point. The point was this moment right now, the point was Dick saying in that low rasp, “Yeah – yeah, I can take more,” as Lewis pressed another finger inside him, the point was the pair of them in this half-lit room in the middle of New York City. 

He didn’t know how long it was until Dick said, “Hey, I think I can – I think I want you to,” and then fell silent like he couldn’t find the words.

“Fuck you?” Lewis asked softly, running a hand over Dick’s back, and Dick said, “Fuck me.” 

Had he said that word before? Lewis wasn’t sure that he had. He found the Vaseline again and touched himself, slicking himself up, trying not to think too hard about it because he wasn’t sure how long this whole thing was going to last: he was so hard he was aching, and felt desperate for some kind of friction. Beside him Dick moved over onto his back, and if there had been something classically beautiful about him before, he was even better now when he was rumpled and pink and wide-eyed. “You think we can do it like this?” he asked. “Face to face?”

Lewis was hit with a sudden feeling of warmth towards him, even more so than he’d felt before, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it, so he just smiled and said, “Sure we can.”

Dick was strong and he was athletic, but he was not particularly flexible. They made it work, though, his leg hooked over Lewis’s hip and his heel digging into his back, their foreheads pressed close together and their breath hot and mingled in the gap between their faces. Lewis braced himself by the side of Dick’s chest and felt Dick’s hands on his back, fingertips digging in, the sweet rake of his nails. “You’re okay,” he murmured, “I—”

“I know,” Dick said. “You got me.”

“I got you,” Lewis said, even though Dick already knew it and had probably known it for hours. As Lewis pushed slowly into him Dick frowned and his breath caught and Lewis slowed and Dick made an apologetic noise. Then he took a deep breath and his brow cleared, and Lewis felt his whole body relax as though he was somehow curving into it. He couldn’t think about himself, he couldn’t, because then it would be all over too fast, but he dipped his head to find Dick’s mouth with his own, a messy clash of tongues and teeth that was barely a kiss, and started slowly to move.

Dick’s hand was tight in his hair, his other hand on his back, and the way he felt was like nothing before, the heat of him, the way he rose to meet him, the way they managed to balance together like tightrope walkers meeting somewhere in the middle. He moved a hand down to wrap around Dick’s cock and felt wetness at its tip already. Dick was letting out short soft moans every time Lewis pushed into him, his mouth curled in an ecstasy of pleasure, and the fact that Lewis had drawn this out of him was remarkable, the very fact that they were here like this. He kissed Dick’s neck, the side of his face, smudged kisses over his jaw and his mouth as they moved faster together. Dick opened his eyes and kissed him hard before coming over his hand, warm and wet between their bellies, gasping out wordlessly, tightening around him. Lewis found himself following Dick over the edge as he came inside him, his body flexing and tightening at the same time, feeling as though he had ascended somewhere for just a moment; to where, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t upset to come back to earth and to find Dick still holding onto him and breathing heavily.

They clung together and Lewis felt Dick’s hand in his hair, stroking his side, his face, and so Lewis kissed him all over, any part of his face and neck that he could reach, before slowly pulling out and flopping down onto the bed beside him. 

When he looked sideways, Dick was staring at the ceiling with his mouth a little open as if he was seeing stars. Then he turned his head and almost laughed into Lewis’s face, sheer happiness, and Lewis found himself beaming too, moving in for another kiss, and another one, and another one too after that.

*

They’d fallen asleep eventually – or Dick had fallen asleep anyway, pressing his face against the flat hotel pillow like he was trying to burrow his way into it. Lewis intermittently dozed and looked at the crack between the curtains, which saw more and more light streaming into the room as the minutes went by. He ached in a good way, he felt as though he had been cracked wide open, he felt as though something had changed for him. _Go to Yale_ , Dick had said. _Spite him by succeeding_. It was either that or his tiny cold apartment, and he didn’t want to go back there now. Maybe; and then again, maybe not. 

He felt a strange sort of restlessness now the euphoria had died down. He considered lying there until morning came and seeing if Dick wanted to go out for breakfast, but he doubted that he would. Going to bed with someone formed a connection between you in that moment, but it always wore off by the time the next day came. He knew what it would be like, he had experienced it before: it would be awkward and unpleasant, Dick would wish he wasn’t there and be agonisingly polite about it, and the experience from last night would be ruined. It wasn’t as though it had been real: Dick had given him money, and together they had created an illusion that had felt real. But there was no illusion like that which was able to last all the way through to daylight. For Christ’s sake, he’d never even told Dick his name.

He listened to the sound of Dick’s steady breathing for a beat or two longer, and then he shifted to the side and moved silently out of bed. He picked his clothes up and stepped quietly into the bathroom to pull them on. What else was there? His little tub of Vaseline, his flask. The money, still sitting beneath his flask. He stared at it for a moment before moving across to the window instead, raising the blind a couple of inches and cracking the glass open for a second to pluck out a flower from the window box, one of those scarlet geraniums that he’d noticed the previous night. He stood it inside Dick’s empty Coca-Cola bottle, and looked at the little pad of paper and stubby pencil on the desk beside it. Then he wrote on it: _My name is Lewis Nixon. Find me, if you want._

He left the money in the end, tucked beneath the Coca-Cola bottle and the flower, and took one final moment before he left to look down at Dick’s sleeping face. He had never felt this sort of tenderness before. It felt like the sort of tenderness that might last a lifetime, if he let it.

*

_1942  
Fort Benning, Georgia_

He knew that he’d lived a mostly privileged life, but Lewis still didn’t see why it should ever be acceptable for meat to be grey. He tried to put it out of his mind, and pushed his fork into his mashed potatoes instead. They were both watery and powdery, which didn’t seem physically possible. The string beans were more string than bean, and there was a strange film on top of his cup of water, but he rolled his shoulders and started packing the food and water away anyway, eating mechanically and letting his mind wander. Fort Benning wasn’t so bad: the library was good, the beds in the barracks were more spaced out than he’d seen before, and Georgia weather meant that the ground was dry and dusty instead of having to slog through mud and slush. 

He had been in the army for more than a year now. Physically, he had never felt more in shape, and he was too busy to feel mentally shitty, which was better than most of his life thus far. He had gone back to his parents’ house, and to Yale, although the army had happened before he’d taken his degree. Maybe he’d go back, maybe not. That wasn’t on his mind very often these days. In all honesty, not much was, not Kathy, not his family, not his studies. Maybe it was just a short-term solution, but he’d found that if he ran fast enough and if he pushed himself hard enough, it took a while for his brain to catch up. The sadness was something that still lurked quietly around corners waiting for him, but military training had been a good way to push it away, for a while at least.

And now officer training. It was something that even his parents hadn’t been able to disagree with. Things were easier with them now, though, since his year in New York, since they’d figured out that if he wanted to, he’d make himself disappear. He thought of it as his lost year, and his family refused to acknowledge it had happened, let alone asking him any questions about what he’d done during it. He’d learned a few things, done a few things he wasn’t proud of. Done a few things that he _was_ proud of, too. Getting himself back together was the top one, although he had his flask jammed down between his nightstand and the wall, so maybe he wasn’t all the way there yet.

He finished gulping down his food and returned his tray and cup. His head was down as he made his way towards the exit, but out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a flash of copper. It had become a habit over the last few years to feel his heart jolt whenever he saw a man with that shade of red hair, that mixture of gold and red and bronze. It happened probably a few times a month – he’d see someone that he thought was Dick, his stomach would leap into his mouth, it would turn out to be someone entirely different, and he’d tell himself to get it together. He glanced idly to his right and felt like a fly in a spider’s web, caught still and shocked when he saw familiar broad shoulders and blue eyes – and then a smile, slow and incredulous, spreading across Dick’s face.

 _Wait for me,_ Dick mouthed, and although Lewis considered haring off to hide, he knew it was never really an option. He hovered outside the mess hall and wondered if his heart was about to beat out of his chest. He wanted to smile incredulously and wanted to choke that smile down at the same time. 

Dick was outside in what felt like a lifetime but had probably only been a couple minutes. “I found you,” he said, smiling so hard his eyes had crinkled up at the sides, and put a hand on Lewis’s shoulder to survey him, eyes sweeping up and down his body approvingly. “You made it. Hey, you look better.”

Lewis wanted to make some joke about how Dick had thought he looked just fine back then, but it seemed better not to, and to just let this moment crystallize between them. There was something more efficient about Dick than there had been years ago, something that let Lewis know that he was a fine soldier. He’d already known, after all, that he was a fine man. They walked together to the library for an excuse to spend a little time together, and he discovered that Dick had finished his degree, that his sister was doing well, that he’d undergone basic training at Camp Croft. His eyes lit up when Lewis told him about Yale – “You went back, huh? I always hoped you would!” – and he frowned, almost imperceptibly, when Lewis told him that he’d been married a few months before. 

They were in the same room in their barracks, they discovered later, and he rolled his eyes at the thought of seeing Dick shimmy in and out of various uniforms three times a day. Dick caught his gaze, knowing so clearly what he was thinking that Lewis was surprised it wasn’t obvious to the whole room, and visibly stifled a laugh. Dick’s area was characteristically neat already, the corners of his blankets tucked in so tightly Lewis wondered whether he’d be able to fold himself in there that night.

Later that evening Lewis came over to bother Dick before bed, and picked his Bible up off his nightstand to look at it and maybe tease him a little. Dick was sitting on the edge of his bed unlacing his boots and the corner of his mouth curled upward as he watched Lewis open the book. In the New Testament there was a pressed flower, a scarlet geranium, and Lewis looked up into Dick’s eyes, feeling as though he’d been socked in the stomach.

“All the things I believe in are in that book,” Dick said softly, and Lewis thought, but did not say aloud, _The only thing I’ve ever believed in is you._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Any comments would be very much appreciated, and you can find me on tumblr at scroungingabilities.


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